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A Nightmare on Elm Street

Plot
A re-imagining of the horror icon Freddy Krueger, a serial-killer who wields a glove with four blades embedded in the fingers and kills people in their dreams, resulting in their real death in reality.

Release Year: 2010

Rating: 5.1/10 (37,250 voted)

Critic's Score: 35/100

Director:
Samuel Bayer

Stars: Jackie Earle Haley, Rooney Mara, Kyle Gallner

Storyline Death stalks the dreams of several young adults to claim its revenge on the killing of Freddy Kruger. Chased and chastised by this finger-bladed demon, it is the awakening of old memories and the denials of a past of retribution that spurns this hellish vision of a dreamlike state and turns death into a nightmare reality.

Goofs:
Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers):
When Nancy and Quentin are in the book store discussing theory's about what is going on, Quentin says the name Rooney, which is the name of the actress who plays Nancy, instead of saying Nancy.

Quotes:
[first lines]
Dean Russell:
Can I have another? Hey. Can I have some more coffee, please?

User Review

Jumpscare on Lame Street

Rating: 1/10

I figured this would be an entertaining remake if nothing else, I was
wrong. Dead wrong. There was a much richer mysterious element to the
original film and to my surprise, much more creative. I thought the
kills and nightmare sequences would be vastly improved upon, but alas,
gigabytes, greenscreens and CGI cannot compete with hands-on
creativity.

The biggest question is of course whether a new Freddy is/was a good
idea and I tried to give Jackie a chance; ultimately you can
interchange actors playing Jason, Leatherface and Michael, they are
suits and masks but you can't replace a personality. Known
personalities such as Pinhead and Freddy Krueger ARE Robert Englund and
Doug Bradley with prosthetics. Robert Englund brought us a believably
creepy and demented sadistic killer where Jackie looked and acted like
a pedophile. There were a handful of lines I enjoyed such as the 'body
dying but brain living on' speech, but the rest seemed like
plagiarized, recycled and poorly delivered lines selectively stolen
from all the Nightmare films. (ex. Robert's "Your eyes say no, no, but
your body says yes, yes." From Freddy vs. Jason)

I don't understand why everything needs to be explained in full now. I
hate that. I didn't need to know what the force was, Michael Myers mom
was a stripper? Oh, okay, his killing is justified. I don't care that
Jason Voorhees played hockey and was prolific in archery and I don't
care that Leatherface has no nose. Some things are more frightening if
you don't know why or aren't given a chronological map of where
everything went wrong. Where was the creepy nightmare goat in this
film? Did they have to cut the sequence showing a young Fred Krueger as
a goat-herder on his family farm? In the 1984 film, what Freddy did
with kids was implied but never told in full. That gives the viewer the
right to view him in any matter, even as an anti-hero. The new film
stamps it on your forehead that he was doing unsavory things to
children which more or less made me sick and made the character less
likable. (I always did find it funny that Freddy had such a cult
following and appeal with kids as a child killer, but it worked. Here
it does not.)

The CGI becomes a distraction here; it's when things look too perfect
that they lose believability such as Freddy bending the wall above
Nancy. The original was creepier and it was produced in camera. The
kills were boring. "I fall asleep, Freddy shows up, Freddy says
something, I'm stabbed, I'm dead." Remember Rod (1984) being slowly
strangled by bed sheets? That was scary, creative and left people
thinking that perhaps Nancy was imagining Krueger and that Rod had hung
himself. The new 'Nancy in the bathtub' scene was a boring cop-out and
seemed more or less to be suggesting that it could be frightening. Even
Tina's death being dragged across the ceiling was more vicious and
sadistic in the original. EVERY 'scare' in this film is the cliché loud
music and somebody jumping into frame.

I couldn't care less about the kids in this film, they are bratty and
almost apathetic/nihilistic to the idea that they were being stalked in
their sleep. Forget about brewing coffee in your closet, these kids are
popping pills and using needles to stay awake this go around. I didn't
buy that they were sleep deprived as the actors had shaggy or ratty
hair and clothes, baggy eyes and looked strung out on heroin since the
beginning of the film. The unnecessary 30 second video blog cameo by
the likable Asian stoner from the Friday the 13th remake was the only
time anyone seemed like they wanted to live.

The simplified story, CG, and casting aren't the only problems, the
screenplay seems to be jumbled as certain characters have been blended
and displaced. The 'Tina' character or 'Kris' in this film seems to
take on most of Nancy's research early on in the film imposing the
belief that she was the lead actress. I'm not sure if that was the goal
of the screenwriter, but it wasn't a very clever or effective trick if
that was the intent. The altogether renaming of the characters and
traits begs the question of why even do it in the first place? Why not
just make a new sequel with a great script and high production value?

This film, to me, was more like a terrible modern high school
cliff-notes adaptation than a remake. It brought nothing new to the
table and improved on nothing. As a film it was outperformed on every
level by it's 26 year old predecessor. I truly hope this dies terribly
at the box-office and that talk of a sequel gets slashed from the
mouths of New Line and producers of this sacrilege. Shame on everyone
involved in this crap. Even the worst sequel to the original series has
more entertainment value.

I am not a purest, I was looking forward to this and I have enjoyed
most of the remakes to a certain degree.